


zilaghana

by AllegoriesInMediasRes



Series: Ramayana fics [32]
Category: Ramayana - Valmiki
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Oneshot, Paranoia, Pre-Canon, Rape By Deception, Trauma, Trust Issues, slight AU regarding Ahalya's curse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26020048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegoriesInMediasRes/pseuds/AllegoriesInMediasRes
Summary: Gautauma does not blame her.zilaghana (Sanskrit): firm or hard as a stone or rock
Relationships: Ahalya/Gautuama
Series: Ramayana fics [32]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1105638
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	zilaghana

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the tags.

Gautauma does not blame her.

All the world is full of talk at the king of the heavens, and how he was cursed to have a thousand vulvas all over his body. Many wonder why the incandescent sage did not curse his wife similarly.

“Blessed is Brahma’s daughter,” some whisper, “to have a husband who feels no anger when another man lays with his wife.”

Ahalya would be insulted by the presumption in their words, if she were not struck by the sheer _futility_ of them. What does the curse on Indra matter, when her heart starts pounding every time her _swami_ enters the hut? Days and weeks it has been since that wretched morning, months even. She is still as terrified as when she first opened her eyes and saw not her husband’s sun-darkened limbs, but instead arms rippling with muscle and glowing with _amrita_ -nourished skin. She can no longer rely upon the evidence of her own eyes, and she can never believe it is him until he has given her incontrovertible proof otherwise.

“You insisted on raising your _vanara_ sons, even though I didn’t approve,” he finally says one evening when he has returned from his _tapasya_ in the woods, and she will not stop cowering in the corner. “I said that they were the gods’ cast-offs, nothing more, but you shook me off and named them Vali and Sugriva, and said you would name me a coward if I did not permit you to bring them up.”

They have never divulged that conversation to anyone, where they matched each other temper for temper. Ahalya’s suspicion finally subsides into a dazed numbness, and she rises on shaky limbs. _What happened_ , she wonders, _to the woman who defied her husband for a pair of bastard children?_

Another morning, she wakes up and is again seized by that indescribable fear, and will not suffer Gautauma to touch her until he relates the story of the day their son Shatanand was instated as the Mithilan royal family sage. They were so proud of him, and Gautauma had actually been moved to tears, and begged a few minutes away from the festivities to compose himself. She had never breathed a word of his lapse to anyone, and again she is reassured. 

The next afternoon, she flinches when he returns to the hut for a midday meal, and without prompting, he says, “Long ago, you had expressed doubt to me about whether Indra was fit to rule the heavens. You spoke of how he sacrificed both your sister Menaka and your queen, Rambha Devi, to break Vishvamitra’s concentration, and how they were both cursed for it. You said that perhaps the sage should have succeeded in his attempts to create a new heaven.”

His voice is controlled, almost too tightly so, and hints at nothing of how treasonous the words had been, hence their secrecy, nor how eerily prophetic they had proved to be.

“Once we were preparing a meal for some visiting sages,” he says when he comes back that evening, before she has a chance to react. “You burned the bread, and I took the blame, so that they might not think ill of you.”

 _He knows me so well by now_ , she thinks ruefully, even as her pulse slows down. To her husband’s credit, he never betrays so much as a sigh of frustration. But nothing can hide the lines that now appear in Gautuama’s forehead, nor the pallor in her face when she glimpses her reflection in ponds and rivers, nor the dank gloom that fills their cottage that was once a hub of knowledge and learning.

She should find some way to unlearn her mistrust. But she remembers how glibly Indra had adopted her husband’s mannerisms, how _natural_ their coupling had felt until she opened her eyes, and she thinks that she cannot learn this lesson well enough, that she would rather be as stone, unyielding and unmoving and untouchable.

**Author's Note:**

> According to folklore, Ahalya was the foster mother of Vali and Sugriva, who were respectively the discarded products of Indra’s and Surya’s affairs, despite her husband’s disapproval. This is not from the original Ramayana.


End file.
